Forest & Found

Born in London, Abigail Booth studied Fine Art from 2009 to 2013 at Byam Shaw School of Art, Chelsea College of Art and the San Franscisco Art Institute. Based in London, she is one half of the studio practice Forest + Found, that looks at landscape as a site of exchange between material and the maker. Working across painting, drawing and textiles she exhibits both in the UK and internationally.

With her practice rooted in drawing, Booth’s large-scale textile assemblages are meditations on the language of the drawn line. Evoking simplicity and minimalism in the quiet gesture and movement of the hand, her work seeks a connection to the monumental landscapes they originate from. Each line is constructed in cloth using found pigments sourced from the land. Using a combination of earth, iron and wood, Booth slowly builds up concentrations of rich overlaid colour before piecing her grid-works individually by hand and machine. The time-based nature of her work produces large-scale, meditative images that explore the spatial compositions and abstract plane of the deconstructed canvas.

Born in London, Max Bainbridge studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in 2009 to 2013. Based in London, he is one half of the studio practice Forest + Found, that looks at landscape as a site of exchange between material and the maker. Working predominantly in wood and sculpture he exhibits both in the UK and internationally.

Taking the natural shape and form of the wood as a starting point, Bainbridge’s vessels explore a strong relationship to form, function, and the experience of sculptural objects in space. Using a combination of woodturning and hand carving he creates objects that celebrate the making process; each piece displaying the physical effort that goes into its conception through the marks left on the surface. There is no striving for perfection in this process. Instead he seeks a depth of understanding that comes only through the intimate nature of working and manipulating a material by hand. The unpredictability of the material constantly challenges the relationship between maker and object being made. In each piece lies a tension as cracks in seasoned wood reveal themselves and splits open up in green wood as it dries and warps. This dialogue between the artist’s hands and the material’s inherent nature is something Bainbridge chooses to pursue and challenge in each vessel and object made.